Drum roll, please....
It's official...A Skye Full of Stars went live on Amazon on Monday, August 3rd! You can find the paperback there as well as on CreateSpace, and the ebook can be found either on Amazon or on Smashwords.
I don't play favorites with my books. I'll be honest...they are much like children. I have two of those, and could never, ever, in a million, trillion years pick a favorite. That's how I feel about all three of my books. What's different with this one, though, is that I did it on my own. With A Color of Thunder and Alabama Skye, I self published...but with help from Xlibris Publishing. (There will be a whole other blog post about that in the near future...) This time I jumped in with both feet and did it myself...and so far, the experience has been incredible.
On Saturday, August 15th, I threw a release party on Facebook. I say that I threw it...when in reality, what I did was show up with prizes. It wouldn't have been nearly the success it turned out to be had it not been for Samantha Soccorso, publicity specialist extraordinaire.
This woman is a powerhouse...and I'm pretty sure she never sleeps. She's everywhere all at once, has her finger in every pie, knows everyone there is to know...and has promoted the hell out of me and A Skye Full of Stars. She organized and ran a fifteen author release party that lasted the same number of hours. She set up a group chat, so all of the authors involved engaged in a sort of backstage conversation while the party was going on. There were contests and giveaways, there was laughter and silliness...I met so many wonderful people, both writers and readers, had forty likes added to my author page, and even won a contest myself in the process. I had no idea what I was in for...More than 2,000 people were invited, almost 350 of them got involved. I was there throughout the entire fiesta...and was so happily overwhelmed by the feedback I received. I was exhausted for two days afterward...but, man, what an awesome experience.
The celebration for A Skye Full of Stars is still if full swing. Just today I learned that it was nominated (yep...by Samantha) as a contender for best cover in the Summer Splash Book Awards held over on Inks and Splashes Literary Magazine Blog. If you like the cover, click on over if you would and give A Skye Full of Stars your vote. It's in a really competitive category. There are a lot of extremely beautiful covers, but it's pretty cool to see mine mixed in with the rest.
While I don't play favorites, I will say that publishing this third book has been an amazing journey for me. It's been so very different from the experiences I had with either of my other books. I've heard a lot of wonderful things from readers about this story, and I love these characters. I was excited to introduce them again, and so happy they are getting a warm response.
And now? Back to the keyboard! The shores of Kelby and Skye are not through with me yet...
